1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the telephone paystations and more particularly to a cost effective, simplified housing assembly for a telephone paystation that retains standard user friendly appearance.
2. Background Art
Both the regulated and deregulated paystation telephone industry have standardized on familar shaped housings introduced by American Telephone & Telegraph Company over thirty years ago. While other shapes, sizes and constructions are introduced throughout the years, they more or less have dropped out of the picture by virtue of lack of acceptance. It might be concluded that the public and industry perceive the familiar appearance of units as manufactured by AT&T, GTE and Palco Telecom as "user friendly" and exhibit the necessary proven reliability where the appearances of other telephone paystations might be considered as "substandard".
Those present standard housings now available in the paystation market have excellent security attributes. These units are designed to be placed at any street corner and withstand all levels of abuse. Because of their rugged construction, they carry hefty price tags so as to provide this level of security. Many locations, particularly the newer more lucrative ones, such as shopping centers, airports, etc., do not require or wish to provide this same degree of security. Because of their location they are more or less protected by a peopled or locked up environment.
Existing upper housing arrangements on the so-called "standard" paystations utilize sliding locking bars on either side of the upper housing to engage mating strike plates on the rear housing. These locking bars are activated by a "T" type wrench. In the usual arrangement one bar is connected to the other bar by means of a torsion bar on the face of the upper housing. The locking bars are locked in place by the upper housing lock. Other attributes of the standard units include the upper housing having double wall welded construction requiring that the welded assembly be sanded, plated and paint finished. The existing "standard" lower housing construction is a welded double wall assembly with extensive reinforcement with bars and plates. The entire assembly is spot and arc welded, sanded, plated and paint finished. The standard design obviously is expensive because of the many parts it contains, as well as the high amount of welding and finishing labor content. It also should be noted the above design contains many areas of entrapment of plating rinse materials and many areas of inaccessibility by paint. This arrangement creates many failures of the finishing system such as corrosion. Also, because of the many operations of welding, sanding, plating and the inherent problems therein, the rejection rate during manufacturing is usually quite high. At the present time there appear to be no other telephone paystations that appear to be similar to those of the standard design as far as external appearance is concerned but which propose to change construction or locking methods. All of the known approaches to cost reduction in the past have been by altering both appearance and construction.